Politicana

The new buzz around parliament is that David Orchard, a Saskatchewan native known for his opposition to NAFTA, the gun registry, and above all Stephen Harper, is a shoe-in for a nomination to run for the Liberal party.  This has some long time Liberal party loyalists worried that the party may be losing credibility.

Really, you can’t blame them.  Stephane Dion has been on a streak of making some unusual and possibly dangerous allies.  First was Garth Turner.  After Garth was elected as a Conservative in the last election, he spent most of his time trying to dismantle is party from within before eventually jumping ship to the waiting Liberals.  Turner’s crazy antics and disregard to his previous party’s leadership had some people questioning whether or not he was the sort of guy they wanted in their tent.

Then came Elizabeth May.  Stephane said that he would not run an opponent against her in her Central Nova riding (where she is challenging the illustrious and sometimes incompetent Peter MacKay)  in exchange for her support of him nationally in the next election.

Now comes David Orchard, who despite his opposition to the Liberal stance on many key issues, is known as a strong environmentalist.  If Dion continues the way he is, he’s going to have a party filled with people who disagree on every issue except the environment, and while that might not make it impossible for him to win the next election, it’s a recipe for disaster afterwards.

This is just great.

Critics are lashing out because Stephen Harper is apparently the first Prime Minister in Canadian history to have a tax-funded stylist.  The Liberals think this is a wast of money, and many have called him hypocritical to boot on account of how he criticized Preston Manning for using party funds to pay for his wardrobe (Harper apparently pays for his clothes, just not the stylist).

The flip side of the the coin here is obvious.  Anyone who has been watching knows that Harper has shown up to international events a few times (once comes to mind where he showed met with Bush and Vincent Fox in Mexico in what looked like a fly fishing vest) looking completely out of place.  The man is the leader of our country, and it reflects on Canada when he shows up to G8 summits in JC Penny suits.  Not every Prime Minister that we elect is going to the fashion sense of Pierre Trudeau, and I don’t think a stylist is too much to ask.  After all, he’s there representing all of us.

I just can’t get enough of stupid Bush clips.

The Prime Minister has appointed a new, pro-reform senator to the upper house to support his platform to see that senators are elected rather than appointed.  He appointed Bert Brown, who is 69, and for years has been one of the few voices fighting for reform in the senate.

This is clearly just another attempt by Harper to come off as a strong leader by fixing something that obviously isn’t broken.  The idea of saying that everyone in the Senate should be elected has a nice, democratic ring to it, but the fact of the matter is that Stephen Harper is going to a lot of trouble for nothing.

Requiring that all senate members be elected is likely to make it easier for a majority government to pass bills (the turnover rate for Senate members will likely be higher, and the composition of the Senate will more closely resemble the party demographics in the commons),  but for a minority it will ultimately change little.

Ultimately, the Canadian people don’t need another set of bothersome elections which raise apathy towards the democratic process in order to change a process that seems to be working fine as it is.

Elizabeth May is learning the hard way what it’s like to have your party under the national microscope. The media uncovered that a prospective Green candidate from Vancouver had previously described the 9/11 terrorist attacks as ‘Beautiful’, and commented that he sympathized with terrorists, saying ‘can you blame them?’.

This is a prime example of why the Green party is going to need time before they can develop into a national party with any kind influence in the House of Commons. For a party to be able to viably compete in a national context, they need the infrastructure not only to find candidates to run in all or most ridings, but they also need the personnel to be able to vet those candidates, to make sure they don’t completely embarrass the party if they do happen to win.

Elizabeth May can count herself lucky here that she never actually nominated him to run for the Greens, because you can bet that if the media hadn’t picked up on this story until after he was nominated as a candidate, she would have been taken completely by surprise.

Dion’s Liberals have accomplished perhaps their most politically adept move to date by making an alliance with a surging green party.  This week Stephane Dion announced that he doesn’t intend to run a Liberal candidate against Elizabeth May in Central Nova, the riding she has chosen for her next campaign.

This is a help to May and the Greens because her main competitor for the environmental vote was going to be the Liberal candidate.  It’s more of a help to the Liberals.  Stephan Dion is looking to validate himself as the only environmentally conscious candidate with any hope of winning.  This deal may get May into the house of commons, but it’s likely to get Dion into 24 Sussex.

It certainly isn’t news that Canada’s aging leopard tanks arn’t going to be of much use to our troops in Afghanistan’s hot summer.  Their lack of air conditioning turns them into metal ovens in the blazing Afghan desert, which can reach temperatures of over 50 degrees Celsius in the summer.

Unfortunately for us the tanks aren’t too much good in the winter either.  Enemy troop movement in the winter drops dramatically, because freezing nighttime temperatures make it too cold for the nomadic Taliban troops to sleep outside.

So the Canadian military has come out with a distinctly Canadian solution.  We are going to ‘borrow’ - or more accurately lease - better tanks from Germany.  While this proposition has a ridiculous ring to it, it actually isn’t quite as stupid as it sounds.

The German tanks are just to replace our existing fleet until we can deploy some of the 100 used tanks that we plan to buy from the Netherlands, new tanks being clearly out of the question.  All in all, the entire deal should cost us $650 million - and what little is left of our pride.

Belinda Stronach has finally decided that she’s had enough of playing politics.  I can’t really blame her.  Over the course of her political career it has become more and more clear that she and politics would be better without one another.  Between her laundry list of tough losses and embarrassing moments, and her general lack of substance as an MP, her career as a public servant has been fruitless for her as well as for the public.

A quick recap of her few years in politics includes a failed leadership bid; a messy and publicized break up with current Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay; and a relationship with the tabloids that resembles that of a Hollywood actress or member of the English Monarchy.

All this without mentioning that she jumped ship from the Conservative party a bare few months before it was to come to power for the first time in more than a decade.  Belinda is the ultimate bad luck charm during a federal election.  I don’t know if these things are a result of bad luck or bad instincts on her part, but I do know that she’s probably better off calling it quits sooner rather than later.

Today the Conservatives unveiled a new French language attack ad that will soon be getting air time in Quebec. The gist of these attack ads is that the Liberal party is concocting some sort of plan to reverse the equalization payments that Quebec recently received.

I am neither impressed, nor surprised. The string of attack ads that have aired since Dion was elected Liberal leader are evidence of the financial inequality between the parties. You would think that the Liberal party, which is widely viewed as the natural governing party of Canada, would have funding equal to if not exceeding that of the Conservative party. They don’t.

The superior fundraising capabilities of the right wing are pretty much a world wide trend. It’s really no wonder. The Conservative party is the sweetheart of big and small business alike, as well as a generally wealthy, suburban demographic of voters. The Liberals and New Democrats, on the other hand, tend to be championed in lower income urban areas. The obvious result is that the fundraising capabilities of the Conservatives outstrip that of their competition.

This leads to an unfair advantage. The Conservatives have the deep pockets required to fund constant ad campaigns trashing the Grits, who pretty much just have to take it. To even the playing field, I strongly believe there should be a cap on how much money the major parties are allowed to raise. Otherwise we are going to wind up like the Americans, who don’t have a shot at leading a major party unless they are able to produce upwards of 20 million in funding before their party’s leadership convention.